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Jackson Mac Low
Jackson Mac Low (September 12, 1922 - December 8, 2004) was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright. Life Mac Low earned an associate's degree in 1943 from the University of Chicago, where he continued study in philosophy and literature into 1945; and a bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek from Brooklyn College in 1953. From 1957 onward, Mac Low worked as an etymologist, writer of reference-book articles, copy editor, indexer, proofreader, and fact checker for many publishers, including Knopf, Funk & Wagnalls, Pantheon, Bantam, and Macmillan. Beginning in 1981, Mac Low and Anne Tardos wrote, directed, and performed in seven radioworks. From 1964 through 1980, Mac Low participated as a visual artist, composer, poet, and performer in the Annual Festivals of the Avant-Garde in New York. In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.“Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post In 1969 he produced computer-assisted poetry for the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was married to Anne Tardos. He wrote 31 books. His work has been published in more than 90 anthologies and periodicals and read publicly, exhibited, performed, and broadcast in North and South America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. He read, performed, and lectured in New York and throughout North America, Europe, and New Zealand, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Asnières, Paris, Bouliac (near Bordeaux), Marseilles, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and New York. In 1986 he received a Fulbright travel grant for New Zealand, where he was the keynote speaker at the Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association conference at the University of Auckland. He also participated in a composers’ conference and led a workshop in Nelson, New Zealand. He read, performed, was interviewed, and led workshops in Wellington, Dunedin, and Auckland as well. In 1989 Mac Low participated in the Fine Arts Festival at the University of North Carolina. From 1990 to 1991, Mac Low served on the poetry panel of the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 1993, Mac Low and Anne Tardos gave a joint concert of their works for voices with prerecorded tapes at Experimental Intermedia, New York. In January 1996 he presented readings and performances at Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2000, Mac Low performed two readings of his poetry at the Bjørnson Festival 2000 in Molde, Norway. He also unveiled a monument to Kurt Schwitters on an island off Molde. Writing Mac Low is known to readers of his poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which he experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. A type of non-intentional composition that he used relied on an algorithm he dubbed "diastic", by analogy to acrostic. He used words or phrases drawn from source material to spell out a source word or phrase, with the 1st word having the 1st letter of the source, the 2nd word having the 2nd letter, and so forth, reading through (dia in Greek) the source. During the last 25 years of his life, he often collaborated with Anne Tardos. From "Insect Assassins" Injects no survive. Efforts control the Animal survive. Survive. Animal survive. Survive. Injects no survive. In nasty spitting eye cost. This Assassin spitting spitting assassin spitting spitting in nasty spitting Insectivorous nutriment species encounter Charles to Are species species are species species insectivorous nutriment species Recognition In 1985, Mac Low won a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1988 he was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry by the New York Foundation for the Arts. He shared an America Award with Robert Creeley for a book of poetry published in 1994. In 1999, he received a Dorothea Tanning Award from The Academy of American Poets and a Wallace Stevens Award. Publications Poetry *''August Light Poems''. New York: Caterpillar Books, 1967. *''22 Light Poems''. Los Angeles, CA: Black Sparrow, 1968. *''23rd Light Poem: For Larry Eigner'' (with multicolored graphic by Ian Tyson). London: Tetrad Press, 1969. *''Stanzas for Iris Lezak'' written 1960 for solo reading or simultaneous group performance. Barton, VT: Something Else Press, 1972. *''4 trains''. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1974. *''36th Light Poem: In Memoriam Buster Keaton''. London: Permanent Press, 1975. *''21 Matched Asymmetries'' poems. London: Aloes Books, 1978. * 54th Light Poem: For Ian Tyson. Milwaukee, WI: Membrane Press, 1978. *''A Dozen Douzains for Eve Rosenthal''. Toronto: Gronk Books, 1978. *''phone'' (art by Ray Johnson). New York: Printed Editions, 1978; Amsterdam: Kontexts, 1978. * Asymmetries 1-260 written 1960 for solo reading or simultaneous group performance (cover video image by Gary Hill & 3-color poem-superimpositions by Patricia Nedds). New York: Printed Editions, 1980. * "Is That Wool Hat My Hat?" performance poem for four readers. Milwaukee, WI: Membrane Press, 1982. *''From Pearl Harbor Day to FDR’s Birthday''. College Park, MD: Sun & Moon, 1982 ** 2nd edition, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon (Sun and Moon Classics), 1995. *''Bloomsday'' (cover design & photos by Richard Gummere). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1984. *''French Sonnets''. Tucson, AZ: Black Mesa Press, 1984 ** 2nd edition (covers & endpapers by Anne Tardos). Milwaukee, WI: Membrane, 1989. *''The Virginia Woolf Poems''. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1985. *''Words nd Ends from Ez'' by diastic text-selection, 1981–83, from [[Ezra Pound|Ezra Pound's] Cantos] (cover art by Anne Tardos). Bolinas, CA: Avenue B, 1989. *''Twenties: 100 poems'' (cover art by Anne Tardos). New York: Roof Books, 1991. *''Pieces o’ Six: Thirty-three poems in prose'' 1983–87 (cover art and videographics by Anne Tardos). Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1992. *''42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters'' 1987-90 (cover painting of Schwitters by Anne Tardos). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1994. *''Barnesbook'' (poems derived by a digitized text-selection method and revision from works by Djuna Barnes; cover art by Anne Tardos). Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1996. * 20 Forties the series "154 Forties," written and revised 1990–99 (front and back covers by Anne Tardos, from a handwritten page by Mac Low). Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain: Zasterle Press, 1999. * Struggle Through (3 poems derived by digitized methods from a poem by Andrew Levy in 1997; cover by Kristin Prevallet). Vancouver, BC: hole books and Tsunami Editions, 2001. *''Les Quarantains (Extraits)'' (five poems from the series "154 Forties," written 1990–95, translated into French by the Royaumont Translation Seminar). Asnières, 1996 ** translation revised by Jackson Mac Low, Anne Tardos, and Juliette Valéry (cover photo by Juliette Valery). Grâne, France: Créaphis and Collection Un bureau sur l’Atlantique, 2001. Plays and dance * The Twin Plays: "Port-au-Prince" & "Adams County Illinois". New York: Mac Low and Bloedow mimeo, 1963) ** 2nd edition first printed book. New York: Something Else Press, 1966. *''The Pronouns — A Collection of 40 Dances — For the Dancers''. New York: Mac Low and Judson Dance Workshop, 1964 ** 2nd edition revised (with multicolored graphics by Ian Tyson). London: Tetrad Press, 1971 ** 3rd edition, revised with new essays by Mac Low (photographs of 1st performances 1965 by Peter Moore). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1979. * Verdurous Sanguinaria play (Baton Rouge, LA: Southern Univ., 1967) Act VI Art * Eight Drawing-Asymmetries of 1961 verbal performance-score drawings. Verona, Francesco Conz, 1985. Collected editions * Representative Works, 1938–1985 (sampler of poems, music, performance works; with introduction by Jerome Rothenberg and cover art by Kurt Schwitters). New York: Roof Books, 1986. *''Doings: Assorted performance pieces, 1955–2002'' (a selection from a half-century of verbal, graphic, and musical scores for groups of many different numbers of performers, as well as soloists; cover art by Ian Tyson). New York: Granary Books, 2005. * Thing of Beauty: New & selected works (edited by Anne Tardos). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Anne Tardos.Jackson Mac Low: Bibliography 1963-2008, JacksonMacLow.com, Anne Tardos. Web, Nov. 2, 2012. See also *List of U.S. poets References *Von Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros. ISBN 0-8108-1600-8. Notes External links ;Poems *"Finding Your Own Name" *Jackson Mac Low at The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog: profile & poem, "(HSCH 10)" *Jackson Mac Low profile & 5 poems at the Academy of American Poets. *Jackson Mac Low, 1922-2004 at the Poetry Foundation. *9 Light Poems by Jackson Mac Low *Jackson Mac Low @ EPC Electronic Poetry Center :Audio / video *Jackson Mac Low at PennSound *Jackson Mac Low at YouTube ;Books *Jackson Mac Low at Amazon.com * ;About *Jackson Mac Low at Brown University *Jackson Mac Low obituary at The Guardian *Jackson Mac Low Official website. *Jackson Mac Low in Virtual Space a remembrance by Barrett Watten, including links to other Mac Low sites *A Blog Catalog in Honor of Mac Low's Birthday, with images of his books *In Remembrance of Jackson Mac Low EOAGH (Issue#2) includes poems and remembrances on-line ;Etc. *"Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project Mac Low participated in *The Register of Jackson Mac Low Papers 1923-1995 @ Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego Category:1922 births Category:2004 deaths Category:American poets Category:American tax resisters Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Brooklyn College alumni Category:Anarchist poets Category:American anarchists Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets